2010: Aquawareness Policy Forum

Within its annual series of policy summits, the EWP’s Aquawareness Policy Forum “Water 2030 – who cares?” took place on Wednesday, 22nd March 2010, in Brussels.

The Water Vision for Europe together with Aquawareness, the European Water Awareness and Water Stewardship Programme, were successfully launched on June, 30th 2008 within the premises of the European Parliament in Brussels with the participation of the European Institutions as well as leading multinationals.

Since the launch several activities were pursued – throughout Europe regional workshops on the Water Vision for Europe gave an insight into the regional priorities, challenges and solutions Europe’s water is facing. These findings were presented globally during the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul in March 2009.

A strategic policy review process has been started in a multi stakeholder approach to gain consensus based recommendations from key stakeholders. These recommendations identify the major strenghts and weaknesses as well as key actions to implement the Vision aims by 2030.

On the basis of this strategic policy review penned in one document, the Aquawareness Policy Forum “Water 2030 – who cares?” presented, discussed and refined these recommendations together with the new European decision makers – the new members of the European Parliament, the incoming European Commission as well as the Council Presidency.

This event linked high level policy makers to practicioners coming from business, industry, agriculture and the civil society setting out practical ideas on actions needed to be taken on European level in order to realize the vision aims and thus achieve sustainable water management.